[meteorite-list] Meteorite from Jupiter-- uh, I mean TO Jupiter

[Chris Peterson]

Hi Sterling-

Indeed, you did not previously reveal the extent of the injuries (which 
would appear to have been caused by something rather larger than the 50 g 
meteorite under discussion here). But I wasn't being glib, nor 
misrepresenting 19th Century medicine. This was certainly not a time you 
wanted to incur any sort of septic condition, such as might easily follow 
from a bone break associated with any injury also producing an open wound. 
So in general, I'm sticking with my position that (in the absence of other 
medical information) simply knowing that an injury in the 19th Century 
resulted in an amputation tells very little about the actual severity of 
that injury in modern terms.

Of course, the 19th Century was 100 years long (how about that math <g>), 
and a lot changed from the beginning to the end. The entirely useless 
practice of homeopathy was developed around 1800 and used extensively 
throughout the century, especially in northern Europe (where it remains 
popular, sadly). Had a homeopath treated your Swedish meteorite victim, he 
might have been doomed regardless of the severity of his injury! (Homeopathy 
became popular because at the beginning of the 19th Century, a treatment 
that did nothing at all actually produced better results than many of the 
standard treatments used by the medical profession.)

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Chris Peterson" <clp at alumni.caltech.edu>; "Meteorite List" 
<meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 1:28 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorite from Jupiter-- uh, I mean TO Jupiter


> Chris,
>
>    You do the medical profession of the XIXth
> century a great disservice, particularly from the
> period following the Napoleonic Wars which,
> for a complex set of reasons I won't reiterate
> here, transformed medicine from medieval
> scholasticism to true science.
>
>    Many people assume that because physicians
> had so many fewer tools to utilize than today's
> doctors, they were made poorer doctors for it.
> On the contrary, many were forced to be better.
> In the particular matter of amputation, warfare,
> especially with artillery, had made this a particularly
> well understood therapeutic problem.
>
>    It is true that amputation was more commonly
> performed in the XIXth century, but that is due
> to untreatable infections that threatened the life of
> the patient. The conditions which required it were
> also well understood, what degree of sepsis and
> so forth.
>
>    I did not elaborate on the details of the Swedish
> injury, but the humerus was shattered, with many
> large fragments and a wealth of bone splinters. Bone
> possesses a remarkable ability for reconstruction if the
> many pieces can be kept aggregated in approximately
> the correct position, but additionally, the muscles
> which would have maintained the positioning of the
> bone while knitting, were shredded to an unrecon-
> structible degree, and all the intervening vascular
> tissue was hopelessly damaged or missing. There
> would have been no blood supply to the injured
> area nor the remainder of the limb. Amputation
> was the medically correct treatment, and might
> still be the preferred, and preferable, treatment today.
>
>    It is just barely possible that now, with a collection
> of specialists, a major surgical center, and 22 hours in
> the O.R., bone support implants, grafting the patient's
> saphenous veins into the arm and some vascular shunts
> too, mesh re-growth sheaths for the muscles, a mountain
> of antibiotics, and $300,000, this arm might have been
> saved. There would almost certainly have been no nerve
> function distal to the injury site and little function to the
> limb of any kind. A totally disfuntional limb also poses
> on-going risks of serious complications. Lifelong
> massage and circulatory therapy, and likely electro-
> myographic stimulation would be required.
>
>    I think you're seen too many Western movies
> where "Doc" is a hopeless drunk with a five-day
> beard, sitting all day in the saloon, in a dusty cowtown,
> and treats all illnesses with paragoric and all injuries by
> pouring whiskey over them. A cliche that may have
> had a few actual antecedents, but an entertainment
> industry and dime novel cliche just the same; not reality.
>
>    Of course, not every XIXth century doctor was
> a Lister, Pasteur, Koch, Ehrlich, Carrel, but I doubt
> that there were any more bad doctors then than now
> (not that there aren't a certain number of sub-standard
> practioners in any era). In fact, it would be harder, in
> those therapy-poor eras, to hide being a bad doctor.
> Folks will tend to notice if most of your patients die...
> Nowadays, if you don't improve, you just go to
> another doctor until you find one that gets the job
> done. I'm on my sixth cardiologist, but he's a keeper.
>
>    Not to belabor the point unnecessarily (probably
> already have), but I think you're being glib and dismisive
> on the basis of crude generalities that have little to do
> with reality.
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb